Hopeless Place
by Military Mechanic
Summary: The average life of a house-elf is two hundred years, and the generally serve the same Master their entire life. Of course, we all know that Dobby isn't an average elf and that his life is far from normal. He's had four Masters - and one of them a headmaster at Durmstrang Institute, where he befriends the oddest of boys and starts the oddest of relationships.


__A/N: Y'know, I don't actually expect people to read this story. If they do, I honestly don't expect it to be reviewed - mainly because no one looks for these characters seperatly, let alone in a pairing with each other. Yet here I am, setting sail to a new ship! :D Actually, full credit for this pairing goes to RoonilFreakin'Wazlib, who gave me the challenge to write it.

It's highly inspired by the song Love In A Hopeless Place by Rihanna, and I've managed to slip a few of the lyrics into the actual story. Below are the ones that inspired the story the most.

So, I actually really enjoyed writing this. I thought it would kill me but...It didn't.

* * *

_Yellow diamonds in the light  
Now we're standing side by side  
As your shadow crosses mine  
What it takes to come alive_

-x-x-x-x-

The year is 1892, and the winter is a harsh one. Students are ushered up the winding, snow-covered pathway and towards the castle, as their guides attempt to get out of the grounds as quickly as they can. As always, the new students pause when they can make out the details of the castle.

The stunning, glass-like walls of the two lower floors; the blues and golds that tinge the upper ones; the spiral designs imprinted onto stone and marble alike. Snow covers all and continues to fall, blanketing the world in white.

Of course, Dobby sees none of this. He sees only the gold and green walls of his Master's office, the grey of the stone floor, and the irridescent shine of the ice-covered window that leads outside.

This is where he lives, during the summer and the holidays. Kept out of sight until needed, out of mind until wanted, and he wants to say that he's fine with it but he _isn't_.

And that's wrong.

Dobby knows that, as a house-elf, he should be happy to be locked away like this. Imprisoned into a house that is not a home and never will be and ordered to do anothers bidding. It should make him leap with joy, but it doesn't. It fills his mouth with an acrid taste instead, as though he has taken a mouthful of cold ash.

There's some respite in knowing that the school year was starting again, though. It meant that he would be able to move about the castle freely, so long as he cleaned as he went.

A small joy in his bleak and limited world, but one that he is not keen on getting rid of.

-x-x-x-x-

That year was a strange one. Dobby could tell that from the very start, when he attended the dinner that welcomed all of the new students. He didn't eat there, of course, but from his spot in the shadows he had the perfect view of all of the new students.

One in particular caught his eye.

It was a boy, with pale skin and blond hair that fell in waves. Sharp blue eyes took in the hall, scanning everything and everyone. _A sharp one_, decided Dobby, _that one is_. He was also wearing a dark red robe that fit him well, and a sharp green scarf wrapped around his neck and lower face.

Later, that scarf would have to go, replaced by one made of furs.

Why that caught Dobby's attention, he wasn't sure. After all, he'd been working for Headmaster Wartooth for near twenty years now. Few students in particular caught his attention on the first day anymore.

This boy was different though.

Dobby couldn't take his eyes off him.

-x-x-x-x-

Gellert Grindelwald.

That was the name of the blond haired boy with the piercing gaze. Like most of the students at Durmstrang, he was a pure-blood in the truest sense of the title. While he had no official training, it was obvious that he had grown up around magic.

Obvious because Dobby watched him. Rather closely, actually.

There was something about the boy, because compared to Dobby's thirty eight that was _all _that he was, that had captured his attention and wouldn't let go. It was in the way that Gellert held himself, the way that he spoke, the way he thought.

As always, no one noticed because no one ever kept an eye on small Dobby.

-x-x-x-x-

By August of 1893, Dobby had come to the conclusion that Gellert wasn't like the other students. He was more focused on his studies and didn't care much for the going-ons aroung him. Maybe that was why the small house-elf felt so at ease when he was around him? Why he decided to throw caution to the wind and leave the shadows?

His Master had never told him that he couldn't talk with the students, after all. Just that he was to keep the castle clean and it was always spotless. Dobby made sure of that - he hadn't one day, years ago, and would always remember the way that the cane had been brought down on his spine.

"Dobby believes the book you want is on the next shelf." said the small elf, slipping out of the shadows and dropping down onto the bare table of the library.

Startled, Gellert spun around, hand slipping into his crimson robe for his wand. It froze when he spotted the intruder. Blond eyebrows rose slightly and a bemused expression appeared on his face.

"A house-elf." Gellert mused, and it was from a question. "How unusual to actually see one of you out and about."

"Dobby does not come out often." agreed Dobby with a nod. Then he pointed a long, thin finger at the shelf behind the now second year student's head. A large volume shook on its shelf, rattleing itself closer to the edge and then levitating downwards where it landed at Gellert's feet. "This is the book that you want, Gellert Grindelwald."

A slight smile crossed Gellert's face when he bent down to retrieve the book, and Dobby felt his entire body go hot. He dissapeared with a loud crack and didn't speak to the student for the rest of the year.

-x-x-x-x-

Dobby's self-imposed solitude didn't last long, however. By the next semester he had returned to trailing after Gellert. Sometimes, he kept to the shadows. Often, he made his prescence fully known.

Gellert, it turned out, didn't mind in the slightest.

-x-x-x-x-

By the boys fourth year, Dobby had given up on keeping to the shadows. The two spoke, and often their hours last late into the night, focusing on things not quite suitable for Gellert's age. Or for Dobby's rank, for that matter.

He knew full well that if his master ever caught him, he would be a dead elf.

It was almost enough to make Dobby feel ashamed of himself. How had one human child become so important to him that everything else faded away? That the summers stretched out longer than ever before, and he suddenly had a reason to get up that wasn't just ingrained into his genetic coding?

Some days, it was enough to make Dobby scream. He would dissappear into one of the lower levels of the school and lock himself away, alone and in the dark, and then he would just _howl_ until the vessels in his throat burst and he was coughing up blood.

Because it really and truly wasn't right, those feelings that he held for Gellert. They were as far from being right as the subjects that the two spoke about where - and, oh, when were those ever normal conversations? When did they contain anything but tales of blood and pain and death? Of curses and disease?

Never. That's when. _Never_.

-x-x-x-x-

In the year of 1897, Dobby found out that he would no longer be working at the Durmstrang institute. Instead, he would be given away as a gift. It was a thought that once-upon-a-time would have made him ecstatic.

Now though, all that he felt was despair.

Leaving the institute, Dobby knew, would mean that he would also have to leave Gellert. And that thought sent waves of sheer cold through him, ending at his heart and causing his breath to stop.

Yet, ever faithfully, he nodded and thanked his Master.

-x-x-x-x-

Dobby made sure to find Gellert before he left. It was in the library, just like it was all those years ago, when the boy was only in his second year. Now in his fifth and going fast into his sixth, Gellert had no trouble reaching nor finding the books he needed.

Still, Dobby levitated the book down to Gellert's feet, just to let the human-child know that he was there.

Gellert turned around, a slight smile on his face. "Dobby. I was wondering when you would turn up. I haven't seen you at all yet this semester, and we're almost into the second week!"

A sad little smile crossed Dobby's face, and he fully intended to just tell Gellert what was going on. That he was being sent away, and they would most likely never see each other again. Instead, when he opened up his mouth something completely different blurted out.

_"Dobby loves you, Gellert Grindelwald!"_

-x-x-x-x-

During the next seventy nine years, Dobby lived with a family that went by the surname of Malfoy. They were a cruel lot, who believed in the ways of old and lived by the idea that a house-elf was far less than a wizard.

Many bones were broken in those years, and the sky always looked bleak. Like it was made out of a dull gray instead of blue - which was comforting and familiar and the color of Gellert's eyes.

Dobby forgot many things during that time, but he never forgot the boy he had fallen in love with at Durmstrang. He never forgot the kiss either -

short and gentle, given just after his impromptu confession. Gellert had laughed, Dobby remembers, and then he'd swooped down and planted a kiss on the house-elf's forehead.

- and it kept him going in the harshest of times. But then, so did the snippets of news reports that kept Dobby up to date on Gellert's life.

-x-x-x-x-

The day that Gellert was sentenced to life in Nurmengard, Dobby found that he could not stop crying. Even when his Master ordered the tears to stop, they continued to fall - and, oh, the cane and he became good friends that day but the house-elf didn't care.

All he cared about was that Gellert, his only love, would forever have to endure the horror of being alone.

-x-x-x-x-

The years passed by quickly after that. Dobby met young mister Potter. He was freed from the hands of the Malfoy's. Hired by Albus Dumbledore. Watched the wizarding world fall apart around him.

_Thought of Gellert, always_.

Forged loyalties of his own. Saved students, aided teachers. Fought as though he were a wizard and not a former-servant of one.

Eventually, he allowed himself to plummet head-first into the war.

-x-x-x-x-

Dobby saw the knife where Harry didn't, flying through the air and heading towards the wizard struggling to disapparate.

So he moved - plunging himself in front of the boy that was responsible for setting him free, then dissapearing with a crack. Only the process of travelling through space wasn't simple this time. There was more than just the customary pull at his navel.

His chest burnt and he was spinning, faster and faster and faster, and then he was landing and he didn't know how his legs managed to hold him up.

It sounded like someone was talking, but the words were hollowed. Like they were coming through a tunnel or being shouted across a quidditch pitch. His vision was crystal clear, then it was blurry, then black around the edges but clear inside. Something deep inside of his head was ringing, a loud and obnoxious tone.

In that moment, Dobby knew that he was dying.

Both his hands came up to hover over the handle of the knife, which was protruding from his chest, smears of scarlet coating his thin smock and running don his torso in rivulets. _Were his hands shaking_, he wondered,_ or was his vision going that quickly?_

It took a moment for him to pull gaze away from himself and over to the shaggy haired boy a few feet away from him.

And wasn't that ironic? That, near a hunder years ago, he had fallen in love with a wizard obsessed with the dark arts and, now, he was dying because he tried to save a boy from a man with those very traits.

Grindelwald and Voldemort; both names known around the world, both famed for the Dark Arts.

Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter; both saviors of their time, both people that Dobby had served.

Such an awfully big adventure, his life had been. If he were lucky, his death would be just as adventurous.

-x-x-x-x-

Heaven is different for everyone. For Dobby, it is a perfect mid-summer day. Tuesday, to be exact, in the middle of field. The sky is always the same shade of blue, periwinkle to be exact, and there's always a gentle wind blowing.

In the middle of this field, there's a tree. Large and anciant, it towers far into the clouds. At it's base is where he spends most of his days and, while his after-life isn't an adventure like he thought it would be, he doesn't mind.

It's perfect anyways, and smells of elder wood and mint.

"Your awake." states the heady, sharp accent of the man that had been waiting for him, in this very spot, for almost a hundred years.

Dobby blinks away the sleep that still tinges his eyes and yawns, before tilting his head back and smiling. "Of course Dobby is. Dobby was just waiting for you to wake up, silly."

Gellert smiles, and the look is more than becoming on his smooth face. He looks just as he did when he was in school - sixteen, and not a day older. "Of course you were."

And then Dobby is laughing and he doesn't know why. What he does know is that whenever he and Gellert walk, their shadows cross each other. That here, in Heaven, he feels more alive than he had in centuries.


End file.
